Prayers for lotto wins, jobs in Canada and even boyfriends have been flooding a Philippine Catholic Church project allowing Filipinos to send their petitions via text messages from their cellular phones.

The petitions sent to the “Text Mary” project are forwarded for inclusion in the intention of daily Masses held in churches in Manila and in prayers of Carmelite nuns, the INQ7 reported.

Phishing is a type of online fraud where the perpetrators attempt to acquire personal, financial, and/or other account information (such as user IDs, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, etc.) from unsuspecting victims. This type of fraud is typically initiated by sending an unsolicited but official-looking email claiming to be from a reputable company, such as a bank, a credit card firm, or an online establishment. The fraudulent email usually contains an urgent message that tries to lure the recipient into providing sensitive information.Continue reading “Don’t fall victim to online fraud”→

Sloppy messages that are riddled with spelling errors and are irrelevant and difficult to read are major source of lost productivity as employees struggle to decipher cryptic online requests and disorganized sales pitches.

“Email should contain the same attention to detail as a letter with signature on corporate letterheard. It’s a direct reflection of your professionalism,” said Sue Jacques, president of Calgary’s Influence Etiquette & Protocol.

“Unfortunately, we tend to just fire off our thoughts and there’s no filter system between our brains and our fingers.”

If you display Chitika ads in your site, check this link for a catalogue on keywords you can use. The keywords will help you target the type of ads that will be displayed in your blog. If you’re still not using Chitika, apply for an account in their home page. If you still haven’t heard of Chitika, here’s a review from someone who earns more than $700 a day from the program.

From Agence France Presse: Trade paper AdAge.com reported this week that US workers would waste the equivalent of 551,000 years during 2005 reading blogs, online web diaries and gossip sheets, which have exploded in numbers in recent years.

Further on in the article, AFP said: But some blog and Internet experts argue that reading a blog in itself does not necessarily equate to wasted time – and may replace time when workers could be idling away their boss’s time doing something else. Click here to read the full story.

In group blogs, author profiles are important so that readers can have additional information on the contributor of the article. In WordPress, the publication of the author’s profile can be automated through the <?php the_author_description(); ?> tag. Just include the tag in your post template, preferably after the body content, and the contributor’s profile will be automatically published. You can then style the text using CSS.

To Sun.Star Blog Chronicles contributors, fill up your profile information. To do so, just log into the site and click on Users, the profile table is near the bottom of the page.

Added: And I forgot to add, you can use HTML in your profiles data to link to your personal blogs.

During the launch, Racoma did his first podcast to discuss blogging and marketing. Cuyos also did a podcast on the use of blogs to spread the gospel. Teacher Sol, on the other had, submitted a video cast on the use of blogging in education, particularly in her school.

After the launch, Janette Toral discussed statistics on internet penetration in the Philippines. She discussed what has become an annual study by DigitalFilipino.com on the Internet in the Philippines. Vincent Rallon of Salveon.net talked about effective marketing using social networking sites.
Attendees of the Sun.Star blogs launch listen to the podcasts of Fr. Cuyos and J. Angelo. They later viewed a videocast by Teacher Sol.

OCTOBER 25, 2005 is a big day for Sun.Star Chronicles as we launch our own Sun.Star Blog at SM Cebu. Yep, I am a blogger contributor to this prestigious blogging community. I am now a writer-contributor to a major newspaper in the country (most especially to the Visayan Community).

It all started with a tagboard invitation from Marlen Limpag to join the Sun.Star family of writers. A tagboard invitation? Usually I do not take invitations there seriously until I followed her link. Alas, it wasn’t a spammer afterall who left the message!

The Sun.Star Blog Chronicles is handled by Marlen del Mar-Limpag, online editor of the Sun.Star website. The section is devoted to the Sun.Star websiteâ€™s coverage of the blogging community. The Sun.Star website is managed by the Sun.Star Network Exchange, a department under Sun.Star Publishing Inc.

I already published my first article with them, “WEBLOGGING can assist students with disabilities”. Feel free to let us know your feedback regarding my entries.

I will be working with a very diverse group of writers here, including a tech priest Fr. Stephen Cuyos and a Pinoy Teachers Network Core group member J.Angelo Racoma.

Teacher Sol is a proactive blogger. Working with exceptional children made her realize that, just like the regular children, they need attention and someone to make them feel important. Sheâ€™s now blogging at www.teachersol.blogspot.com.

While He was on earth Christ revealed Himself as the Perfect Communicator. He spoke from within, that is to say, from out of the press of His people. He preached the Divine message without fear or compromise. He adjusted to His people’s way of talking and to their patterns of thought. And He spoke out of the predicament of their time. (The Pastoral Instruction Communio et Progressio, no. 11)

Jesus Christ, the Perfect Communicator, used every available means to communicate the Good News. He was so creative and ingenious in communicating with the people of his time, that if he were around today, Jesus would have a blog. But what and how would he blog?

If Jesus were a blogger he would talk about the daily experiences and concerns of people. He would use stories from everyday life like the uninvited wedding guests or a determined woman looking for her lost coin. He would talk about a Samaritan who helped an injured person and in the process teach people what it means to be a compassionate neighbor. He would most likely describe the kingdom of heaven “like treasure hidden in blogosphere” or “like an eBay bidder looking for fine pearls”. Or he would surprise and startle his readers by making a most unexpected person a “hero”, like the unrighteous steward in Lk. 16:1-13. Maybe he would also write down the story of an unjust judge to explain to his online visitorâ€™s their need to pray always and never to lose heart. In short, Jesusâ€™ blog would be aimed at helping people understand who God is and what his reign is like.

If Jesus were a blogger he would ask questions and address the issues of social justice and poverty. He would challenge the prevailing social and political structures of our time and speak against religious bigotry, racial prejudice, and economic selfishness. Forgiveness, compassion, peace, and putting others first would be some of the common themes of his blogposts. He would side with the poor and the marginalized and call them blessed. He would call for an end to war and all forms of violence. And he would insist good over evil, grace over vengeance, love over hatred.

If Jesus were a blogger he would have a shoutbox on his sidebar so he could chat in real time with online friends like Nicodemus, Mary, Peter, Martha, John, and the woman at the well. Aside from the twelve disciples, his blogroll would contain links to tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, sinners and other outcasts. To protect himself from spammers like those irreverent Pharisees and Sadducees, heâ€™d install an anti-spam plug-in. I am sure Jesus would use open-source content management systems and he would release his blog articles under the Creative Commons License. He may well have a â€œmake poverty historyâ€ whiteband on his website. Heâ€™d also probably enable a plug-in that allows guests to make donations to victims of natural disasters. This is in line with his challenge for everyone to make a positive difference in this world.

If Jesus were a blogger he would post from his mobile phone or through a wifi-enabled Linux laptop. This is important because, being always on-the-go, he would need to blog from every place where there is a wireless hotspot â€“ in the synagogues and marketplaces, on the mountain and at the sea, or while by his lonesome in the desert.

If Jesus were a blogger he wouldnâ€™t be simply transmitting information or entertaining people through well-crafted stories. While his web-based publication would be true to life, written for the purpose of teaching spiritual and moral truth, he wouldnâ€™t stop there. He would go far beyond just blogging. As a good shepherd, he would be where his flocks are â€“ healing the sick, conversing with outcasts, preaching to the masses, praying with his disciples, teaching by example â€“ all for the glory of the Father.